Iron Legion Battlebox

by David Ryker

  I pushed forward into the wall of choking smoke and smog and squinted around. Tilt-wings and other small transport ships were in pieces, churned and toppled, in flames. A huge, gaping hole was spread across the rear wall, the metal around it all gnarled and bent outward like steel ribs. The hangar itself was huge, despite being an auxiliary entrance for smaller ships. It was completely open to the coldness of space, protected by a sonic airlock — a stream of sonic waves that kept the air separated from the vacuum — but let things pass in and out freely, like ordnance. Whatever was being fired on the ship had come straight through and decimated the hangar. The airlock hung, translucent like a curtain, and beyond it, a war was raging.

  It was impossible to hear the battle from beyond the veil, but in the space outside, ships were swirling in a deadly melee. A planet, green and indigo, swept with clouds, hung half in view, and from the surface spewed cannon fire and rail pulses. They leapt off the planet and out of view, and then seconds later, the ship shuddered under the impact and sparks exploded from the ceiling, or a plume of flames erupted from the gaping hole in the wall.

  I choked on the smoke and edged forward, looking around for any means of escape. Every ship that wasn’t totaled had already been taken, and everything that was left was a smoking wreck. I bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood and swore. Alice felt heavy on my shoulder. She coughed on the thick air.

  I kept moving. It was all I could do. The floor was starting to shift again.

  Ships buzzed like wasps outside, streaking past the airlock, laying fire into each other. Ours, and… Who knows? I didn’t have time to scrutinize it. We had to find some way off the ship — an escape pod, or… Or….

  My eyes settled on the far wall and I froze. None of the ships had been tethered, but there, along the back wall were dozens of F-Series mech suits, lined up and harnessed to the walls.

  I turned from them to the gaping hole in the wall, and then to the airlock. The projectile had come straight through — but if the next one hit the hull near to it, and the airlock was disrupted, the entire hangar and the rest of the ship would spontaneously decompress and we’d be sucked into space.

  I swallowed and tightened my grip on Alice’s ribs, hiking her higher onto my hip. It was our only chance. I started moving fast, pulling her along with everything I had.

  I circled the wrecks and made for the back wall, keeping one eye on the airlock, and the other on our footing. The ground was tilting as the ship was battered, and the thrusters fought to push it back level.

  The F-Series loomed, twenty feet tall, and I headed for the closest ones, praying that they’d open. Between each one, a set of steps led up, near vertically, to a platform that serviced the one on each side. I grunted and scooped Alice onto my shoulder as I had before. She didn’t make a sound. I wasn’t sure if she was even conscious anymore.

  I took the rail in my right hand and held on to her with my left, her head lolling across my aching back. I planted my feet in the rungs and heaved her upward, throwing her the last span onto the platform. She landed hard and lay flat as I pulled myself up, chest heaving. Against the walls were switches. I didn’t check what they were, I just threw them all. Lights buzzed to life and the F-Series found power. I stepped over Alice and approached the one on the left, reaching for the hatch release. I closed my fingers around it and twisted, pulling the handle upward. It hissed and a spurt of compressed gas shot out of the body. The hydraulics lifted the steel hatch with a whine and I watched it. “Come on, come on!” I yelled, urging it up with my hands.

  I had no fucking clue how I was going to get her in there. It took me two attempts to pick her up again. She’d gone totally limp, eyes closed, breath shallow. What I hoped to achieve with it, I couldn’t say — but if the airlock blew out, at least we wouldn’t have our eyes boiled in our skulls in the vacuum of space. Once we were rigged up, we could go from there. We could try to find our way off the ship — look for a leaving transport, head for the escape pods… The F-Series would provide some protection at least, and if we were blown out of the hangar, at least the F-Series had directional thrusters. It was a small hope — a splinter of it and no more, but it was all we had.

  I cradled her in my arms and hefted her feet up over the lip, growling as I forced her legs in, pushing her over the crest. She tumbled into the cockpit with a heavy thud.

  The fires raged around us and the floor had sunk again. I ignored it and swung myself onto the front of her F-Series, reaching in to straighten her up. The steel cut into the underside of my arms as I forced her straight and looped the harness over her shoulders. She didn’t have a helmet, or any of the other safety gear, but there was no time. I clamped the harness shut over her chest and yanked it tight. She yelped a little in shock, but didn’t look up or move her arms. I took a deep breath and stared at her, wondering if it was all useless — if she was bleeding into her brain, or if she was just going to slip into a coma and die — or whether the F-Series would be any protection at all when the ship was torn apart. I ignored the thought and threw myself upward, closing both hands around the hatch. It gave under my weight and I dragged it down, slamming my feet into the body of the F-Series and forcing the hatch to seal. I watched as Alice disappeared, swallowed up inside the steel body, not knowing if I’d ever see her again.

  The second the hatch engaged, the harness decoupled and the F-Series dropped two feet onto the hangar floor and toppled forward. I threw myself sideways towards the rail and reached out, feeling the shoulder of the F-Series clip my calf as it fell past me. My hands clattered into the metal and my legs swung against it. Pain lanced through my shins and knees and I let out a low, guttural grunt.

  Alice’s F-Series clattered to the ground and slid, face down along the floor, back toward the fiery corpses of the ships that had amassed in the corner. I scrambled for purchase and surmounted the steps, my breath ragged, back screaming. I yanked on the hatch release of my own F-Series and clambered in. I sank into the chair and flicked the switches in front of me, bringing it online. I’d done it so many times in sim that it was all familiar, but totally alien at the same time too. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely get them to the right places. The screen initialized and lit up, scanning the room. The hatch hissed closed as I clamped my harness together and the couplings disengaged. My hands pressed into the gloves and assumed the controls and a message popped up on the screen in front of me. ‘AI Assistant Initializing. Please wait.’

  “Wait?” I yelled. “I don’t have time to wait.” I yanked on the controls and the F-Series pushed forward off its mount, landing hard on the ground. I lurched down the slope awkwardly. This was nothing like the simulations. The recruits who passed the exam would have had weeks of hands-on training in the full immersion simulation. I’d had none.

  ‘AI Assistant Online. Welcome to the F-Series Federation Mechanized Unit.’ The words stung my eyes, burning white against the fiery hellscape in front of me.

  “Welcome,” the voice said. It was male, friendly, but calm. “Please enter your pilot authorization code to assume full control.”

  “I don’t have a code!” I shouted, forcing the mech straight, fighting the incline.

  “Scanning biometric profile.”

  It wasn’t giving me full control. The handling was sluggish and most of the HUD options were grayed out and locked off. There was no telemetry, no weapons access, no external comms. I was a goddamn statue. “Don’t scan biometric profile! Save Alice!”

  “Airman Maddox, James Alfred. Current status: in review. I’m sorry, Airman Maddox, you are not authorized to operate this Mechanized Unit. Please disembark when safe, or I will be forced to report you.”

  “Report me?” I squawked. “Have you seen what the fuck is going on?”

  As I said it, a rail pulse lit up the hangar and swept away, carving the side of the hull into two chunks.

  My cockpit crackled with static and a voice cut through the din. “Attention all crew of the Rege
nt Falmouth, this is Acting Commander Volchec. We’ve come under insurmountable fire. The ship is compromised and we’re dropping out of orbit.” The voice paused and sighed, the fear and strain palpable. “Abandon ship.” Volchech’s voice was quiet and hopeless. “I repeat — abandon ship.”

  The airlock stuttered, fizzled, and then failed. The dim blue hue that let us know that space was out there and the air was in here disappeared, and then everything went sideways.

  Everything that was inside the airlock, burning and smoking and sliding and exploding, all left the ground at once and flew toward the door. The force nearly snapped my neck as my F-Series was slingshotted into the vacuum of space and jettisoned from the Regent Falmouth.

  “I’m detecting major structural damage to the hull and vital systems of the Regent Falmouth,” the AI announced flatly.

  I watched through the screen as it spun into view, criss-crossed with rail marks, scorched and black, and punctured and bled like a pin cushion. Debris flew everywhere and ships zoomed and flew between it, fighting and picking one another off like bugs in the distance. I wondered who was flying them. Who got out. Who didn’t. Who would survive, and how. Everett. Did she make it? Would anyone?

  “You don’t fucking say! Engage thrusters!”

  “You don’t have sufficient—”

  “I think we’re a little past that, don’t you?”

  The AI went quiet for a second, as if deciding. “Granting temporary control. Full capabilities online. What would you like to do?”

  I pulled up my hands and straightened them in front of me, jabbing at the holographic options suspended there. The thrusters kicked up and pulled me out of the spin. Though the F-Series didn’t have aerial capabilities like the A-Series or S-Series, they did have directional thrusters for faster ground movement, and in space, that was enough to get you moving.

  “Equilibrium restored,” the AI announced. “Though I’m detecting the gravitational pull of the planet Draven. We do not have sufficient thrust to escape. Would you like to send out a distress signal?”

  I grunted and searched the screen frantically, but there was nothing but debris everywhere. “No. Find Alice!”

  “Who is Alice?”

  “The F-Series. The F-Series that was in the hangar! Scan for it, or look for it, or something!” I howled.

  “What sort of scan would you like me to run?”

  I couldn’t believe it was asking me that. “How the fuck should I know?”

  “This is why only trained pilots should operate Mechanized Units.”

  “Seriously?” If it had a neck I would have wrung it.

  “Scanning.”

  For an AI it had some sass. I mean, Sally had some, too, so maybe it was a pattern. Who the hell was programming these things?

  “For your information, it will be approximately twenty seconds until we reach the stratosphere of planet Draven. The chances of surviving reentry at this speed are very low.” It was telling me I was going to die, but it didn’t sound concerned at all. I wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or terrifying. I didn’t have time to think.

  “Have you found her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well then, keep fucking looking!”

  “Your vitals indicate elevated stress levels. Calmness is an essential quality of a good pilot.”

  “If you—”

  “Scanning.”

  I ripped the controls up and watched the hands of the F-Series rise in front of me just in time to block an incoming piece of hull careening towards me like a steel log. It impacted my hands and forced me backward. I could already feel the heat building up inside the cockpit, the cooling fans whirring incessantly with the friction from the atmosphere.

  “I detect one signal matching the signature of a Federation F-Series.”

  “Where?” I yelled, wrestling the log away. The debris was glowing around me as it all rained down onto Draven.

  “Two kilometers and moving away.”

  “Show me!” I called, routing all the power we had into the thrusters. The screen in front of me displayed all of the twisting, hurtling debris lit up and everything was outlined and shaded in red. In the distance I could see a tiny green blip, tumbling toward the surface. A reticle appeared around it and zoomed in. An F-Series was tumbling haphazardly, beginning to glow.

  “Raise her on comms,” I commanded, slamming my thumbs into the thrusters and powering forward. The suit began to judder under the force, the air battering at me as I weaved between the chunks of falling ship.

  “I am getting no response,” the AI said back. “It appears that her ignition system has not been initiated.”

  “Keep going.”

  “The chances of survival are very low, and falling. Without control of her suit, she will burn up on entry. I recommend putting your thrust into a vertical vector to reduce our descent speed.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare.” I could see flames building along the bottom of the screen. “How far?”

  “One point two kilometers, but it is futile, she will—”

  “Keep going!”

  The AI quietened down and instead brought up the figures for me on screen — the hull temperature, the distance to Alice, a dotted line tracing the path. Below her was the curve of the planet, cut out against the endless canvas of space, the faint glow of an approaching dawn lingering beyond the horizon. Above, the Regent Falmouth was exploding into a million pieces. Ships and steel rained down all around us and I had to keep adjusting not to get obliterated by them.

  We broke a kilometer and I could feel the atmosphere clawing at me. Every bolt in my suit was shaking and my eyeballs were rattling in my head. Sweat was pouring off my temple and the screen was white with fire. All I had to go on was the glowing reticle. I kept it in the center of the screen and kept the thrusters pinned.

  The distance counter rolled into triple digits and a vague visage of a figure swam into view.

  My arms stretched out and she flew closer.

  The AI spoke up. “Hull integrity is failing. The temperature is too high. We must reduce speed immediately or—”

  We impacted like colliding stars. An almighty crash rang through the rig and I snapped my arms shut around her. We were spinning, locked together. The camera dome on top of my rig’s body was pressed against hers. I was in the dark, in an oven, roasting alive. The air was soup and my lungs burned under the taste of it. I gripped hard with one hand and peeled away, looking for an out.

  “Reverse thrusters, slow us down!” I screamed.

  “I am. We are unable to slow down. We are moving too fast, and our load is too heavy. I recommend releasing to increase chances of survival.”

  Load? He meant Alice. “Find me another option.”

  “There is not one. You must release the cargo to improve your chances from the current chance of success.”

  “Which is?”

  “Zero percent.”

  I swore and looked blindly around. There was nothing. Nothing but debris. Shit. Wait. The debris. “Redirect thrusters to this vector.” I tapped the screen and the reticle moved.

  “I don’t recommend—”

  “I wasn’t goddamn asking! Do it.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but I felt us start to shift, barely noticeable through the indomitable vibrations. We floated left, straight into the path of a chunk of hull.

  “Collision alert.”

  “I know!” I reached up over my shoulder as I had done a thousand times in simulation and felt my fingers close around the grip of the Samson Automatic Rifle holstered to the back of the F-Series. I pulled it down and levelled it at the debris, pulling the trigger.

  The bullets ripped out of the barrel and into the slab of steel. I directed them to a corner and it began to twist. “Reverse thrust!”

  We slowed and the debris closed in on us. I twisted over as it drew level and took the corner in my hand, swinging us above it. The shaking quietened and I slammed Alice down, pinning her
against it. My hands spread out and I forced it level, riding it down through the layers of the atmosphere. I held my hands there, watching them smoke. The readout on my HUD told me the surface of it was way above safe temperatures, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did now. If it didn’t work — if the chunk of steel didn’t do enough to disrupt the air so that we didn’t burn up, then it was all pointless.

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Everything was shaking. My hands were numb, my back in pieces, my feet tingling and ringing like bells. My skin was burning, eyes stinging. I closed them. Clamped my teeth shut. The blood boiled in my skull. My ears threatened to burst. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or not. I couldn’t tell if I was conscious or not. My mind was churning, blending thoughts into mush.

  And then there was silence and space. The gentle whistling of air.

  I felt coolness rush between my feet. I opened my eyes. The screen was devoid of flame but cracks snaked through it. A warning sign was flashing and smoke was trailing through the display, but ahead, beyond it was the green and lush landscape of a planet. Distant and dramatic, but not bathed in fire, and not seen from outside the atmosphere.

  I swallowed hard and shook sense into myself. Alice. She still needed me.

  I kicked the debris away and watched as it sailed, smoking, through the air. Debris still rained down like meteorites all around us. We weren’t out of the woods yet.

  I took hold of her suit and turned her over. She was still unresponsive. As was my own AI. The words ‘Onboard Systems Failure… Rebooting…’ still shone red in my eyes. I watched my fingers work through the letters, spidering along the carcass of her F-Series for the manual override I knew was there.

  Chutes. She needed chutes. I’d studied hard, and good thing. If I hadn’t, I’d have never known that there was an override, let alone where to find it. I pulled the panel on her back, between her shoulders, up and closed my fingers around the handle and pulled, hard.

  Studying never accounts for the real thing. The second I pulled the handle, the chutes exploded in my face. Like an airbag, they blew me clean off her body and into the sky.